A Forgotten Ace Double: Siege of the Unseen, by A. E. Van Vogt/The World Swappers, by John Brunner

Ace Double Reviews, 66: Siege of the Unseen, by A. E. Van Vogt/The World Swappers, by John Brunner (#D-391, 1959, $0.35)

April 26 was A. E. Van Vogt's birthday, so here's an A. E. Van Vogt Ace Double! Siege of the Unseen is about 30,000 words long. It is apparently the same story as "The Chronicler", a two-part serial from Astounding, October and November, 1946. I'm not sure if the story was revised in any way for the 1959 reprinting. It was also reprinted once as "The Third Eye of Evil", a really pulpy title that actually is the only one of the three that has much to do with the story. As for John Brunner's The World Swappers, it is about 43,000 words, and I don't know of any earlier or different publication.

(Covers by Ed Valigursky)

Siege of the Unseen is rather uneasily framed by a series of extracts from the coroner's report on the death of the protagonist, Michael Slade. Slade's mutilated body was found on his land -- identifiable by his third eye. I have to say I was never really worried about Slade's fate, though!

Michael Slade is a successful businessman who gets injured in a crash and suddenly develops a third eye on his forehead. He eschews treatment, and instead tries to learn to see from the third eye. As a result his wife divorces him and he is generally shunned. But when he does learn to see well with all three eyes (curing his previous two-eyed astigmatism in the process), he finds that he can transport himself to another world, apparently coexistent with Earth. This world is inhabited by three-eyed people, including a beautiful naked woman.

Before long, and somewhat against Slade's will, the woman has recruited him to come to her world and join her in a battle against the evil oppressor Geean. She dumps him in a gloomy city and says he must survive for a day. He finds that the city is inhabited by three-eyed vampires, who are apparently normal (if three-eyed) people who have been corrupted by Geean. A young woman befriends him, and tries to get him to lead an attack on Geean, but Slade doesn't feel ready -- especially when the woman asks him for a drink of blood.

Slade returns to Earth only to be recalled again, where he meets a nicer group of people, apparently primitives, but actually people living in superior harmony with nature. But they prove rather passive as to the evil Geean, and soon Slade is on his own again, before being captured by Geean forces. But Slade finds an unexpected ally, leading to his eventual confrontation with the evil leader (not to mention, of course, meeting the beautiful leading lady again ...)

It's a truly silly book, but at times the silliness is inspired. I can't say I liked it much, but I liked it more than I expected. Van Vogt could be so strange that you just had to play along at times. In John Boston's wonderful phrase, he "was the Wile E. Coyote of SF. He ran off the cliff in 1939 and looked down sometime in the 1950s."

The World Swappers is about a secret group of long-lived people plotting a better future for humanity. Which is a familiar enough idea, but Brunner uses it a bit differently than many others. It opens with a man, Saïd Counce, lying in wait for a powerful businessman. He confronts the businessman with his plan to rule the galaxy (that is, the smallish local group of planets humans have colonized). Earth, it seems, is a very nice place to live, but it is becoming overpopulated. Opening new colonies is not feasible, so the businessman plans to promote emigration to the existing colonies -- but they all resent Earthmen. Counce suggests that the businessman, Bassett, is going about things just a bit wrong, and offers his group's help, then disappears.

Then we meet others of Counce's group, on a distant unoccupied planet. They have discovered evidence of aliens, the Others, evidently humanlike but adapted to slightly different types of planets. They fear that humanity is not ready to meet the Others. Finally, we go to Ymir, the least pleasant of the human colonies, ruled by a very repressive religious sect. There we meet a rebellious young woman, Enni Zatok.

We quickly gather that Counce leads a group of people devoted to the interests of all humanity, as opposed to people like Bassett, interested only in themselves. Counce's group is desperately trying to arrange for humans to be welcoming to the aliens. In part they hope to solve the problem of Ymir -- especially as they have a plan for Ymir.

One aspect of the story I liked was the early use of matter transmission as a means of practical immortality, much as with Wil McCarthy's Queendom of Sol stories. (That is, a record of the copy of a person created when he is transmitted is saved (and possibly edited even, as with McCarthy's stories) and then the person can be recopied if his "original" dies.) That's the earliest use I can think of of this particular wrinkle on matter transmission.

On the whole, its an enjoyable novel, though a bit wobbly towards the end in particular. It tries to do too much too fast, perhaps. The noble central motivations are nicely presented, too. On the other hand, the ideas and events are often a bit strained, not quite convincing. Not Brunner at his best, at all, but as ever with him it is a decent read.

The Hugo Ballot: Novella

Novella

The nominees are:

All Systems Red, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)

"And Then There Were (N-One)," by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny, March/April 2017)

Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com Publishing)

The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing)

Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.Com Publishing)

River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com Publishing)

My views here are fairly simple. It’s a decent shortlist, but a bifurcated one. There are three nominees that are neck and neck in my view, all first-rate stories and well worth a Hugo. And there are three that are OK, but not special – in my view not Hugo-worthy (but not so obviously unworthy that I will vote them below No Award.)

My ballot will look like this:

1.       Sarah Pinsker, “And Then There Were (N – One)” – A story about a convention of alternate Sarah Pinskers, complete with a murder. It is warmly told – funny at time, certainly the milieu is familiar to any SF con-goer. But it’s dark as well – after, there’s a murder – and it intelligently deals with issue of identity and contingency.

2.       Martha Wells, All Systems Red – a ripping good novella about a security android which calls itself a murderbot, guarding a group of researchers on an alien planet. The murderbot mainly wants peace to watch its favorite TV shows, but that becomes impossible when the team comes under threat. It soon becomes clear that there is an unexpected group on the planet that doesn’t want any rivals, and the murderbot has to work with its humans to find a way to safety. That part – the plotty part – is nicely done, but the depiction of the murderbot is the story’s heart: convincingly a real person but not a human, with emotions but not those that humans expect: very funny at times but also quite moving.

3.       Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones – I was rather disappointed by Every Heart a Doorway, the first novella in McGuire’s Wayward Children series. I thought its main character boring, and its murder mystery plot rather a mess, and I thought the story just too long. For that reason, I passed on Down Among the Sticks and Bones until it showed up on the Hugo shortlist. So I came to the story with low expectations – and I was completely delighted. This isn’t just better than Every Heart a Doorway – it’s LOTS better. This tells the backstory of Jack and Jill, very important characters from the first book. They are twins, born to a couple who aren’t really interested in children except for how they look to their colleagues, and who force them into their ideas of the perfect girls – Jacqueline is the pretty one (thought they look the same), intended to be the popular one; while Jillian is the tomboy, the soccer player, the adventurer. (The one weakness of the story is the characterization of the parents – they’re a cliché, their faults seem forced.) The things is, that’s not who the girls really are, and when they find a door into another world, they take it, ending up on the Moors, a very dangerous place, ruled by a vampire, and featuring other horrors like werewolves. Jack stays with a relatively good man, and exercises her interest in learning and scientific research. Jill stays with the vampire, wanting to become a vampire herself – his heir, indeed. But when Jack takes a local girl as her lover, Jill’s eventual reaction catalyzes the inevitable ending.

4.       Sarah Gailey, River of Teeth – a caper story (OK, not a caper – an operation!) about a mixed team of “hoppers” (hippopotamus wranglers, basically) assembled to clear the lower Mississippi of feral hippos. Their leader, Winslow Houndstooth, also wants revenge, against the man who burned down his hippo farm years before. There’s a lot of violence, a truly evil villain, and a fair amount of believable darkness. I mean, I enjoyed it. I just didn’t see it as special – in particular in a speculative sense – yes, there’s the fairly cool alternate history aspect involving the hippos in Louisiana, but nothing with real SFnal zing. Still – it’s pretty fun.

5.       JY Yang, The Black Tides of Heaven – The story concerns the twin children of the Protector, originally promised to the local Monastery. But one of them turns out to have precognitive powers, and the Protector claims them … the other strikes off on their own, ending up in a rebellion against their mother. The good – a decent magic system (alas, treated in a clichéd fashion on occasion), interesting if seemingly inconsistent and underdeveloped treatment of gender (to be fair, the supposed inconsistencies may well be eventually explained), and decent characters. The not-so-good: a fairly clichéd plot (which doesn’t really resolve, though to be sure its companion novella was released in parallel, and that may illuminate the story), rather ordinary prose, and some pacing issues, mainly in the opening section (about a fourth of the story), which really should have been almost entirely cut. Bottom line – an okay story that has been ridiculously overpraised.

6.       Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: Home – Much as with Every Heart a Doorway, I was puzzled by the extravagant praise Binti received – I thought it kind of a mess, really illogical, hard to believe. Alas, the sequel, unlike the McGuire story’s prequel, is not much better than the opening, in my view. (Also, it doesn’t come to a real conclusion.) Binti, after spending some time at Oomza Uni, comes home to her family for a visit, and a pilgrimage. She is accompanied by her friend Okwu, one of the murderous Meduse (who also altered Binti’s genetics, though they didn’t kill her, unlike all her innocent prospective classmates). The notion is apparently to make some repairs in the Meduse’s relationship with humans, especially the Koush, a rival people to Binti’s Himba. But little enough happens on that ground (presumably that’s left for the next installment) – instead, Binti’s pilgrimage becomes a trip to the home of the mysterious Desert People, who turn out to be part of her ancestry, and to have a relationship going far back in history with a group of aliens with special tech. I have to say, my main problem was that I just didn’t believe in the story, nor, really, in Binti. It’s obvious a lot of people love these stories, and so it’s clear they’re seeing something I’m missing. So be it – the fault may well lie with me. But I didn’t like this story much, to be honest.

My nominees were, in alphabetical order by author:

1.       Kathleen Ann Goonan, “The Tale of the Alcubierre Horse”

2.       Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Prime Meridian

3.       Sofia Samatar, “Fallow”

4.       Sarah Pinsker, “And Then There Were (N – One)”

5.       Martha Wells, All Systems Red

In reality, the three that weren’t nominated are easy to understand – they are the three least readily available. Goonan’s story is from an original anthology (and one that didn’t seem to get a ton of attention, Extrasolar, from PS Publishing in the UK). Samatar’s story is from her exceptional collection Tender, and story collections typically get less attention, especially for original stories, than either magazines or anthologies. Moreno-Garcia’s may be the most obscure – available only to supports of her Indiegogo campaign (and to lucky reviewers!) Indeed, I suspect it might be eligible for next year’s Hugo. But there were plenty of other worthy potential nominees; for instance Damien Broderick’s “Tao Zero”, Dave Hutchinson’s Acadie, and Jeremiah Tolbert’s “The Dragon of Dread Peak”.

The Hugo Ballot: Novelette

Novelette

The nominees are:

“Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, July-August 2017)

“Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017)

“The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)

“A Series of Steaks,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017)

“Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May/June 2017)

“Wind Will Rove,” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, September/October 2017)

This is really a very strong shortlist. The strongest shortlist in years and years, I’d say. Two are stories I nominated, and two more were on my personal shortlist of stories I considered nominating. The other two stories are solid work, though without quite the little bit extra I want in an award winner.

My ballot will look like this. I’ll mention that first two were 1 and 2 on my list before the shortlist was announced, which is pretty unusual!

1.      Yoon Ha Lee, “Extracurricular Activities” (Tor.com, 2/17) – a quite funny, and quite clever, story concerning the earlier life of a very significant character in Lee’s two novels, both Hugo nominees themselves, Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem. Shuos Jedao is an undercover operative for the Heptarchate, assigned to infiltrate a space station controlled by another polity, and to rescue the crew of a merchanter ship that had really been heptarchate spies, including an old classmate.

2.       Suzanne Palmer, “The Secret Life of Bots” (Clarkesworld, 9/17) – a very old bot on a battered Ship trying to stop an alien attack on Earth. It shows a surprising amount of initiative – even, one might say, imagination – in dealing with the Incidental. Might that not be useful in dealing with the aliens? Or might bots have their own ideas about their own place? Very strong work indeed.

3.       Sarah Pinsker, “Wind Will Rove” (Asimov’s, 9-10/17) – a story about the folk process, and memory, and the occasional importance of forgetting, set on a generation ship. Rosie is a middle-aged teacher on the ship, and a pretty good fiddle player. A malicious virus wiped most of the ship’s memory not too long into the journey, and Rosie and her fellows work on restoring what’s been lost by remembering everything they can, including folk tunes. But some of her students resent being taught history – another form of remembering – why should they re-create Earth on the ship, or even the new planet (that they will never see)? Even Rosie’s daughter has doubts. But purposeful forgetting – or malicious erasing – hardly seems right either. These questions are considered in the light of Rosie thinking about a particular folk tune, “Windy Grove”, a favorite of her grandmother’s, and how it changed over time – and might still change. Thoughtful and quite moving.

4.       Vina Jie-Min Prasad, “A Series of Steaks” (Clarkesworld, 1/17) -- Helena is a frustrated art student who, in order to make ends meet, has turned to forging steak using a 3-D printer (in this future, real meat is very rare (pun intended!).). She’s pretty good at it actually (it’s an art!), but then she receives a huge order for a bunch of T-bones … with a blackmail threat attached. The story turns into a bit of a caper story, with a bit of a love story attached – effectively enough. The original central idea, and nice characters, lifted it above the ordinary for me.

5.       Aliette de Bodard, “Children of Thorns, Children of Water” (Uncanny, 7-8/17) – set in a fantastical Paris ruled by houses of Angels, a couple of adversaries are trying to infiltrate House Hawthorn (using among other things cooking skills). It’s a story I liked – and a story that made me want to read the other works in this milieu – but it didn’t quite seem finished to me, more an outtake or pendant to its overall series.

6.       K. M. Szpara, “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time” (Uncanny, 5-6/17) – Not a bad story at all, but not one that thrilled me. It’s a vampire story, and a gay/transgender story. The first aspect is, if I’m honest, a bit of a negative for me, which isn’t fair, I guess, but it’s real – I’ve been tired of vampires for a long time. The second aspect is just fine, and nicely – but maybe just a bit obviously – integrated with the vampire theme. Nothing wrong with any of this, but for me it all added up to “fine work, but not really award-worthy”. Many others’ mileage varied, which is fine.

Obviously several novelettes I nominated didn’t make the cut, but while I’ll still say that if “Soulmates.com” or “The Hermit of Houston” or “ZeroS” or “Keepsakes” or a couple others had made that ballot it would be marginally better, I really can’t complain about the ballot we got.